


The Beauty Underneath

by MedieavalBeabe



Category: Disney - Fandom, OC - Fandom
Genre: Friendship, Multi, Romance, fairytale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 23:45:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MedieavalBeabe/pseuds/MedieavalBeabe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Disney always tells of the beautiful princesses, that is, the ones with beautiful faces, but what about those who have deep inner beauty and never get a look in? Princess Hanna has no hair due to a childhood illness. Princess Valentina doesn't have a stick thin figure by any means. Princess Sarah Jane is the most unladylike princess in the world. Princess Antoinette is plain as opposed to pretty. But doesn't that mean they deserve a happy ending too? Throw in some handsome princes, an evil sorceress named Aeron and a dragon or two and the scene is set for the fairytale that Disney never bothered to make!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Before The Book

Once upon a time, a long, long time before the story actually begins, there were four princesses. 

The first was born in January during a snowfall in the kingdom of Epoppolinda. For years and years the King and Queen of Epoppolinda had longed for a child but it had not come, until the day that the Green Fairy of Dreams came flitting past their bedroom window and heard their mournful prayers for a child. 

“Poor souls,” sighed the Green Fairy, shaking her head in pity and then she appeared before the King and Queen. Being a fairy, she was no bigger than a vinegar bottle, but in all her greenness; for her skin and hair were green as well as her clothing, she cut a regal, impressive figure in the room. “Do not distress,” she told them. “Take this magical elixir and by the first snowfall of winter, you will have a child.”

Thus, the potion took effect and during the first snowfall of winter, they were blessed with a baby girl. She was such a sweet and beautiful little child that the whole kingdom loved her at once, even those whose hearts were as tough as shoe leather and cold as ice fell for the little princess. And she was named Hanna. 

However, when Hanna was only six years old, her life was changed forever, as she was struck down with a sudden, strange illness which none of her doctors could account for. The poor girl became very weak and thin and lost all her hair. In desperation, the doctors tried all they could to save her, but day by day, the princess seemed to be fading fast. The King and Queen didn’t know what to do. 

Then, one day, help came, once again in the form of the Green Fairy. A shepherd woman who was working outside of the palace saw that the little fairy was being set upon by some spiders as she became tangled in their webs. The shepherdess called her cats, who pounced on the spiders and then she herself freed the Green Fairy.

“Oh, thank you, good woman,” said the Green Fairy, gratefully. “How can I ever repay you for your kindness?”

“Well,” said the shepherdess, “our princess has been taken ill recently. She’s a sweet, dear little thing, the apple of her parents’ eyes and of all the eyes in the kingdom. The doctors don’t know what ails her but they fear we may be close to losing her. Is there anything you can do?”

So the Green Fairy flew up to the castle and used a powerful enchantment to save the princess and rid her of that foul illness forever. The King and Queen couldn’t express their gratitude enough. 

“However,” said the Green Fairy, sorrowfully, “I regret that I cannot do anything for her hair. I am afraid that unless it grows back by itself, she will be bald for the rest of her life.”

The King and Queen waited to see if her hair would grow back, but as the years passed, it seemed as if it wouldn’t. They convinced themselves it didn’t matter; their daughter was saved and that was all that mattered, and the people of the kingdom agreed too.

“You’re still our beautiful little girl,” the Queen told Hanna.

“Yes, hair or none, it makes no difference,” the King added.

Hanna tried not to mind too much. For a start, it meant she didn’t have to wash her hair ever again or worry about it being tangle by the wind or caught in doors or tree branches or worry about styling it or keeping it dry. But as time went by, she began to worry that no man would ever see past the fact that she had no hair and she would never get her happily ever after. 

“It shouldn’t matter,” she told herself. “I am a princess. I am happy.”

But even so, she worried. 

The second princess was born in May in the kingdom of Alberichi. The King of Alberichi hadn’t had any children at all with his first wife, and she had died only three years into their marriage, so when he took his second wife, he was rather proud that she bore him a child. They named her Valentina and she grew up to be a happy, joyful child. However, as she grew upwards, she also seemed to grow, well, outwards too. By the time she was in her teens, she wasn’t exactly enormous but neither was she stick thin. She was rather on the plump side, some might say, not that she really cared. It wasn’t anything to do with what she ate, it was just the way she was and it was never really an issue. 

That is, not until she went to a party in another part of the country where all manner of princesses were invited to and no man asked her for a dance. She thought nothing of it, after all, they had their pick of many, many princesses. But when she went for a wander outside, she overheard three of the princesses talking together. Valentina hid behind an ornamental fountain to eavesdrop. 

“She can’t help it that she’s not beautiful like the rest of us,” said Snow White.

“Please,” sighed Cinderella, “She’d be beautiful if she was as thin as us. No wonder no princes asked Valentina to dance.”

“Cindy, that’s a little harsh,” reprimanded Aurora, primly. 

“Why? It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Face it,” sighed Snow White, “only the thin, beautiful princesses get happy endings.”

Valentina didn’t cry, not there and then, anyway. Instead, she simply turned and walked away. Back home, however, she stood in front of the mirror, examining herself. “Am I really not beautiful because I’m big?” she asked herself. Of course, her reflection couldn’t answer. She sighed and then the tears came. “They’re right,” she decided, “I’m never going to get my happy ending.”

Of course, she would eventually, but she was not to know that yet. 

The third princess was born in August in the kingdom of Illusianna, but not to the King and Queen. You see, the King and Queen of Illusianna had also longed for a child for years but there was no Green Fairy this time to help them out. A visit from the doctor soon confirmed their fears; the Queen was barren and the King infertile. Nevertheless they longed for a child, so they decided to adopt one. They set out from the castle and searched far and wide until they found what they were looking for. 

A couple who lived in a tiny country cottage had many, many children, and one more on the way, but they had very little money and could barely feed themselves and keep up with the repairs needed on their tiny home. The King and Queen offered to help them if they could keep the child in exchange. The desperate couple agreed and thus when their baby, a little girl, was born, they gave her up for the King and Queen to raise as their own. They named her Sarah Jane. 

However, something in Sarah Jane’s nature meant that whilst she was raised to be a princess, she was much more comfortable dressing down and getting her hands dirty – quite literally, and really that sentence ought to be “getting her feet dirty” since she was constantly running around barefoot, even outside. 

“You can’t run in proper shoes, not with heels and pointed toes,” she always explained. If he had to run around in one of her beautiful princess gowns at all, she always tucked it into her long underwear, much to her parents’ chagrin. 

“That is neither elegant nor ladylike,” they would say, “and certainly not for a princess to do! Only the common folk do that!”

Sarah Jane didn’t care. She was comfortable being who she was. Even so, her parents would despair when she walked into the room with her gown tucked in, or else three inches deep in mud, her hair all windswept and tangled and her feet so caked in mud it looked as if she had been running around all day in a farmer’s field before it had been ploughed. Usually, this was the case.

“No man’s going to want to marry you if you don’t behave like a princess,” the King told her one day. 

Sarah Jane shrugged. “I don’t care.”

“You’re an embarrassment,” he told her severely, and then left the room. 

She told herself afterwards she didn’t care, but she did, inwardly. His words had shaken her. “My own father thinks I’m an embarrassment,” she muttered, sitting on her bed. “Why can’t they understand? I need to be free.”

The fourth princess was born in November in the kingdom of Peppita. Her story was rather simple; she had been born to parents who had been married a year and rejoiced in their daughter’s birth and all that jazz, like any normal, happily married couple. They named her Antoinette, after the Queen’s favourite uncle, Anthony, who had been taken rather young by illness (as a matter of fact it was the same illness that had almost killed Princess Hanna but that was besides the point.) Antonia was rather a shy, quiet princess and as she grew up, well, she blossomed, but more like a thistle than a rose, people would say. She was plain, not beautiful. Because of this, her favourite childhood story was The Ugly Duckling.

“Read me The Ugly Duckling story again, Mother,” she would beg night after night, and each night her mother would happily oblige, each time ending the story with the usual “And the duckling looked down at his reflection and saw that he had become a beautiful swan, proving that inner beauty is the most valuable thing a person can have, as opposed to outer beauty.” So, Antoinette resolved that would always be her motto, and she did her best to prove that had inner beauty over outer beauty. However, all the people she ever met were so shallow that they could never quite see beyond her outer appearance. All the princes who came courting left at once, with disappointment writ on their faces. This only served to make her more quiet and shy as she grew.

“I wish I could find someone who’d take the time to get to know me,” she whispered every night before she went to sleep. 

Now, something was about to happen that would bring all four princesses together. The fair princesses Snow White, Cinderella and Aurora were throwing a joint ball, and all of the fairest princesses in the land were invited. The posters that were distributed all around the country, to all of the kingdoms, read thus.

“Party at Snow White’s at eight o’clock on April 23rd. All fair princesses invited: no baldies, no fatties, no inelegants, no plains and NO trolls! Come along if you’re none of the above!”

“No baldies?” repeated Hanna in Epoppolinda.

“No fatties?” repeated Valentina in Alberichi.

“No inelegants?” repeated Sarah Jane in Illusianna.

“No plains?” repeated Antoinette in Peppita.

Well, that did it. They were annoyed. It was Hanna who took action, though, well, no, that isn’t true, it was Hanna who took legal action, and by legal I do not mean that she got lawyers involved, rather than what she did was legal, unlike what Sarah Jane did, which was to gatecrash the party, muddy feet and all, and openly have a go at the princesses on the spot, and she was then promptly thrown out of the palace. 

Hanna, on the other hand, simply took up a quill pen and a sheet of paper and began to make flyers of her own, which she then delivered to all corners of the kingdom.

“Meeting tonight in the Golden Spindle inn (The Golden Spindle was a very classy, but quiet place where princesses could always go to be alone, in the very heart of the forest) for princesses with beauty in their hearts. No princesses who are so beautiful that every man falls for them at first sight allowed; strictly for girls without hair, girls who aren’t stick thin, girls who aren’t elegant and girls who are plain. If you fall into one of the categories listed above, be there tonight at eight o’clock.”

Thus, as the flyers were received by each princess, the story of a friendship between the four could unfold and their journey to find their individual happily ever afters could begin...


	2. The Golden Spindle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disney always tells of the beautiful princesses, that is, the ones with beautiful faces, but what about those who have deep inner beauty and never get a look in? Princess Hanna has no hair due to a childhood illness. Princess Valentina doesn't have a stick thin figure by any means. Princess Sarah Jane is the most unladylike princess in the world. Princess Antoinette is plain as opposed to pretty. But doesn't that mean they deserve a happy ending too? Throw in some handsome princes, an evil sorceress named Aeron and a dragon or two and the scene is set for the fairytale that Disney never bothered to make!

Hardly anyone was in the Golden Spindle when Hanna, wrapped in an indigo cloak lined with ermine covering her head, stepped inside. Only a few old sailors at the bar, sharing a toast to “the good old days at sea,” and they were harmless enough. Clutching the flyer she had penned herself in her hand, she went up to the bar an ordered a Butterscotch Beer. Then, she took the bottle over to a seat in the corner of the room and looked up to the clock on the wall. It was only ten to seven; any princesses who had received the fliers still had time to get there. 

Even as she was thinking this, the door opened and Sarah Jane walked in. Hanna stared at the newcomer; who was dressed in rustic browns and greens and had bare feet. Then she noticed that the girl was holding a flyer and her heart leapt. 

“Can I get a rum and lime, please?” the girl asked the one eyed barman, who flashed her a toothy grin and gave her her drink. 

“That’s a mighty rough drink for so pretty a young gal,” grinned one of the sailors. 

“I’m a pretty rough girl,” replied Sarah Jane, and then she turned and spotted Hanna. Simultaneously they both held up their flyers, and then Sarah Jane made her way over to Hanna. 

“Aren’t your feet cold?” asked Hanna.

“Nah. Too much mud on them,” replied Sarah Jane, sitting down beside her. 

With a nervous giggle, Hanna removed her hood. Sarah Jane looked surprised by her lack of hair and then smiled, a genuine smile, not one that showed she was laughing at her in any way. “Let me guess; you’re trying out for the part of an Egyptian Princess in the musical version of The Prince of Egypt?”

“No,” replied Hanna, flattered by this comment. “I was ill when I was a child and I lost all my hair. It’s never going to grow back.”

“Well, at least you can’t get it tangled on tree branches when you’re climbing them,” Sarah Jane replied, consolingly. “Mine’s always doing that.”

“Why do you climb trees?”

“I don’t know. I just like it, I suppose. There’s something about nature and the country that I love. I seem to have this...connection with it, only my dad hates that. He says I’m an embarrassment.”

“Because you’re inelegant?”

“Bingo!” Sarah Jane smiled. “I’m Sarah Jane, by the way, but you can call me Sarah for short.”

“Hi, I’m Hanna.”

“Do people call you Han for short?”

“Not really.”

“Is it ok if I do?”

Hanna nodded, still surprised that Sarah Jane was neither horrified by her baldness, nor cracking jokes about it. 

The door opened and a plump girl in blue stepped in. She held a flyer in her hand. Seeing the others holding up theirs, she stumbled nervously up to them. “Hi, I’m Valentina.”

“Hi,” smiled Sarah Jane. “I’m Sarah, and this is Han.”

“I wrote the fliers,” added Hanna. 

Valentina sat down, nervously. “I honestly didn’t think anyone else would be here; or that, you know, it might all be some big joke rigged by Snow White or something. You know, just so they can laugh at me.”

Sarah Jane gave her a gentle nudge. “I know how that feels, trust me. You know, Princess Aurora used to walk around the woods barefoot all the time and somehow her feet never got covered in mud. Then she has the sauce to tease me about not wearing shoes. Personally I think her fairy godmothers must have enchanted her feet so they were permanently clean. I wouldn’t put it past them.”

Hanna nodded. “I rarely venture out because the last time I met her, I overheard her giggling about me not having “soft silky blonde locks” like her.”

Valentina smiled. “She can be so mean.”

“Yeah, so can Cinderella,” agreed Sarah Jane, sipping her rum and lime. 

“Cinderella?” 

The trio turned to see a plain girl dressed in orange enter the room. Seeing them holding the fliers, she strode confidently up to their table. “Don’t tell me she’s here, please.”

Hanna smiled. “No, it’s just us...non-perfect princesses here. I’m Hanna.”

“I’m Sarah Jane, but you can call me Sarah.”

“And I’m Valentina.”

The other girl smiled in relief. “I’m Antoinette. Now don’t even get me started on Cinderella; she was so horrible the last time I met her, like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Oh, I think we would,” smiled Sarah Jane. “It looks like we’ve all been picked on by her before in life.”

“And Aurora,” added Hanna. 

“And Snow White,” put in Valentina. 

“Oh, and has anyone met Princess Ariel, yet?” asked Sarah Jane. “You know, Prince Eric’s wife?”

“Oh, yes!” sighed Antoinette, sliding into a seat. “She’s really mean to all the princesses like Cinderella and Belle, claiming they’re not really princesses because they weren’t born with royal blood. Big deal! They still married princes.”

“Belle’s quite a nice girl,” Hanna reflected. “But the others...”

Valentina pulled a face. “Why do they have to be so petty and catty all the time. I mean, I know I haven’t got a three inch waist like the rest of them-!”

“You’re lucky,” said Antoinette, looking her over. “They all look like you could snap them in half at any minute.”

“Yeah, why do princes always want princesses who are stick thin, with magically beautiful looks, elegant manners and hair as thick as...weed!” Sarah Jane finished, looking frustrated that she couldn’t come up with a better simile for thick hair. “They just fall for them on the spot.”

“And Prince Ferdinand and Prince Philip kissed their girls when they were technically dead,” added Antoinette. “They kissed corpses! Ew!”

Hanna almost choked on her Butterscotch Beer as she started to laugh. “You’re right!” she spluttered. “I never thought of that before!”

“Men like that are so fickle,” sighed Valentina, propping one elbow on the table and her chin on her hand. 

“Ah, princes, who needs them?” said Sarah Jane, shaking her tangled hair. 

“But it would be nice if one though to look our way for once,” Hanna pointed out. “I mean, I have never met a prince who’s told me I’m beautiful, with or without hair.”

“Me neither,” sighed Antoinette. 

“No, same here,” added Valentina. 

Pointedly they all glanced at Sarah Jane. “Oh, please!” Sarah Jane laughed. “Have you seen my feet?” She held out one mud-caked foot. “When princes see me coming, they run a mile!”

“It’s not right, though,” said Hanna, putting her bottle firmly back on the table. “A prince should love you for who you are, not because you’re beautiful.”

“None of them want to take the time to get to know us,” Antoinette pointed out. “These days they just seem to want to marry a princess who’s pretty and who thinks they’re wonderful in anything they do.”

“Like I said, fickle,” Valentina added. 

“Like I said, who needs them?” said Sarah Jane, finishing her drink. 

Hanna smiled. “You’re pretty much a feminist, aren’t you, Sarah?”

Sarah Jane smiled. “I just think it’s highly unlikely that any prince is going to want a princess who prefers running around outside without shoes on and with her dress tucked in her knickers; unless he’s paid to marry her, that is. All of you guys have a better chance of finding a Prince Charming than I do.”

“Nah.” Hanna shook her head. “All the men I’ve ever met either like brunettes or blondes; they never say anything about girls with no hair whatsoever.”

“No prince wants a wife who’s chubby,” added Valentina.

“Aw, sweetie, you’re not chubby,” said Antoinette, giving her arm a squeeze. “Compared to most of the other princesses, you look relatively normal.”

“Thank you.”

Hanna looked around at them and nodded, firmly. “You know what, there’s something great about each of us that makes us unique. Sarah’s right. We don’t need princes for a happy ending, surely?”

The others exchanged a look and then a smile. 

“Yeah, we should try and find our own happy endings,” agreed Antoinette.

“Together,” added Valentina. 

“All for one and one for all,” chorused Sarah Jane. 

Hanna looked around at them all; a bunch of misfit princesses, as they were, and felt, for the first time in her life that she was where she belonged. “Princes or no princes, we should have an adventure and get a happy ending our own way.”

“And prove to all those other princesses that they’re not the only ones who can live happily ever after,” agreed Sarah Jane. “Who’s with me?”

“I am,” Hanna declared. 

“So am I,” said Antoinette.

“So am I,” echoed Valentina. 

Hanna put her hand on the table and all the others put their hands on top of hers. “Princesses with Beauty Underneath, unite. All for one-”

“And one for all!” they all chorused. 

United for all time, little did these princesses know that their happy endings were closer than they could have ever imagined.


End file.
